To keep from crying during the final run of her career, Julia Mancuso donned a Wonder Woman ski suit and tied a red cape around her neck, then raced downhill at the World Cup in Cortina D'Ampezzo, Italy, with friends and American skiing legends waiting for her at the bottom.

That was how Macuso's illustrious skiing career will end, with the same buoyancy and shimmer its held for years.

"I felt like the crazier I would dress, the better and easier and less I would be emotional and cry," Mancuso told The Associated Press. "I had to pull out the superpowers for today."

"Super Jules," as Mancuso has been known to American teammates for years, was greeted with a champagne shower at the end of her run by Lindsey Vonn. The two have raced together since age 9.

Mancuso, 33, is the most awarded skier in American history. In all, she has four Olympic gold medals, five world championship medals and 36 World Cup medals in a 19-year career.

She was gunning for a bid to her fifth Olympics but hasn't fully recovered from right hip surgery that's held her out of the past two World Cup seasons.

When it became clear she wouldn't qualify for the combined event in Pyeongchang, South Korea, next month, she chose instead to leave professional skiing and join NBC as a broadcaster for the games.

"It was really emotional after the first training run because it kind of hit me then that this was going to be too hard for my body," she told reporters through tears afterward. "I've already gotten rid of most the tears. It's an emotional time because it's been such a big part of my life."

Her first Olympic medal, a gold in the 2006 giant slalom in Turin, Italy, was the lone bright spot for Team USA skiing, which won only two more medals the rest of the Games.

Her coach gave her a plastic tiara in 2005 that she wore as a good-luck charm, even on the medal stand at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. During those Games she released a line of lingerie called "Kiss My Tiara."

"I think underwear is my calling," she once told reporters. "You can be feminine and fast."

She won two silver medals for the downhill and combined events in those Games, then a bronze in combined in the 2014 Sochi Olympics.